“... taking the ‘horse-killing route’ through Germany and Denmark, then across the North Sea to Leith. Presenting himself as an Italian gentleman called Ottavio Baldi, he contrived to whisper his real identity and purpose to the king and endeared himself sufficiently to James that he remained at the Scottish court under his Italian alias for three ...”

“... luminaries. In fact the picture is Victorian, painted in about 1845, but the artist – James William Doyle, an uncle of Arthur Conan Doyle – was known as a meticulous historian, and the figures are vividly and accurately presented, using known 18th-century likenesses. Dr Johnson is holding forth, with the professional eavesdropper Boswell at his ...”